Twitter beats Facebook as ‘most popular social media site’ for London Olympics

Twitter was the most popular social network for talking about the Olympic Opening Ceremony, with 97 per cent of all mentions happening on the microblogging site, according to new research.

According to iProspect, a large British digital marketing agency, and Carat, a media agency, Twitter was the favourite social mediasite for 97 per cent of all online conversations about the opening ceremony.

The company monitored Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and a range of blogsand forums during the opening ceremony in order to find out which was the most popular site for discussing the show and how sentiment towards the British changed during the high profile event – directed by Danny Boyle, reported the Daily Telegraph.

The study discovered that 60 per cent of all social media interactions about the opening ceremony were positive – while 14 per cent were negative. The rest were mediocre. The majority of tweets about the ceremony and British sentiment (58 per cent) were from the United Kingdom – while 22 per cent originated from the US. The rest were from around the world.

Earlier this week Twitter revealed that Rowan Atkinson‘s appearance in the Olympic opening ceremony was the most tweeted topicduring the event.

Atkinson’s cameo performance sparked the biggest spike in mentions of the event on the website.

The comic actor appeared with the London Symphony Orchestra, playing a single note on the piano during a rendition of Chariots of Fire.

London 2012 is the first Games to see Twitter play a major role, with the Olympics mentioned by more than 10 million users since Friday’s ceremony.

Lizzie Armitstead, the British cyclist, gained new followers at a rate of 500 per second after winning silver in the women’s road race yesterday, with more than 25,000 following her less than an hour later.

Andrew Fitzgerald, Twitter’s manager of editorial programming, said: “The biggest spike in Twitter conversation during the Opening Ceremony? When Rowan Atkinson, aka Mr Bean, appeared in a hilariously memorable homage to the Olympians of Chariots of Fire.”

Tim Berners-Lee, the British founder of the World Wide Web, was also the subject of millions of tweets after making a special appearance during the ceremony.

In a show that not only prompted social media use but incorporated it, he tweeted a message that appeared on screens around the stadium, reading: “This is for everyone”. Since he posted the message, it has been retweeted 10,246 times.

Twitter calculates spikes in conversation using a tool that tracks how many tweets mention a particular topic each second.